Venture building & investment

John was CFO of DisplayLink Corp, a market-leading USB graphics software and semiconductor business, from 2011-20, when it was acquired by Synaptics In. He has been actively involved in the Cambridge technology scene for over 35 years and has held senior management roles and/or been an investor in a number of start-ups, many of which have resulted in successful exits or IPOs. Previously, John was CEO of Velocix, a leading provider of content delivery network solutions, and successfully exited the business to Alcatel-Lucent.

Andrew has 35 years’ experience in co-founding and building start-up businesses in the biotechnology sector in the UK and USA. He has served in chairman, non-executive and executive roles with UK and US biotech startup companies, including Celltech, Cantab Pharmaceuticals, Hexagen, Signature Bioscience, Novacta, Ionix Pharmaceuticals, NeurAxon, Syntaxin, Synosia, Kymab, Bicycle Therapeutics, 14M Genomics, PredictImmune, PolyProx Therapeutics and LoQus23 Therapeutics. He also served as a venture partner within venture capital firms Abingworth and Syncona.

Barbara has a broad range of commercial, fund-raising and general management experience, with many years of business development in the biotech sector. She is currently Chief Business Officer at Autifony Therapeutics and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Francis Crick Institute, where she helps run the KQ Labs accelerator for data-driven health startups. She also chairs the LifeArc Seed Fund Investment Committee. She has a BA and DPhil in chemistry from the University of Oxford and holds a Sloan Fellowship from London Business School.

Pam is an adviser in health care systems and digital health working in the UK and USA. She is a Fellow of the Judge Business School at the University and an angel investor in health technology startups. She is Chairman of Cambridge Angels, sits on a number of boards including Crown Place VCT, and also advises health technology accelerators in the UK.

Specialising in medical devices, Iris has been involved in technology innovation, commercialisation and market expansion to India for two decades. She co-founded UltraShape, acquired in 2012, and opened MetaCure’s Indian operations. Iris chairs Good Relations India (GRI), a market entry and positioning advisory, which brought to India companies such as M&S, SunLife, Virgin Atlantic, Apple and numerous tech start-ups. She is Chairman of London Business School HealthTech Challenge and of Imperial College Seed Fund.

Dr Vishal Gulati is a specialist venture capital investor backing scientists and tech founders bring their innovations to market. Prior to becoming a VC, Vishal trained as a clinician scientist at University of Oxford and Imperial College which gives him a rare and unique perspective on the journey of scientific discoveries all the way to commercially successful products.

Vishal’s investment thesis is based around the convergence of healthcare, data and engineering. In his venture capital career spanning over two decades, Vishal has held roles at leading venture firms such as Atlas Venture, Oxford Science Enterprises and Molten Ventures (fka Draper Esprit). In 2022, Vishal launched Recode Health Ventures, a San Francisco based VC fund which invests in ground breaking healthtech companies led by exceptional founders based in USA, UK or Europe.

Vishal has served on the boards of over fifteen public and private health and life sciences companies; from Horizon Discovery (a leading player in CRISPR gene editing now acquired by Perkin Elmer) to the world’s most scalable DNA synthesis platform (Evonetix). He was an early backer of some of the pioneering European companies in digital health and AI drug discovery space such as Clue, Ieso Digital Health, Quit Genius, Zoe, Kheiron, Arctoris, Turbine, Relation Therapeutics, LabGenius and Chemify. His portfolio of over 30 VC and angel investments makes him one of the most active investors in this space.

Vishal chairs the investment committee of Cancer Research UK seed fund, and holds similar roles at The Francis Crick Institute, (KQ Labs), British Heart Foundation, Medical Research Council, and Innovate UK. Vishal also serves on the advisory board of Reuben College, the newest of the Oxford University Colleges focusing on biology and artificial intelligence.

John has a successful track record as a Director and CXO of high tech and clean tech companies, having grown and sold several startups. He was responsible for CMR Fuel Cells’ London Stock Exchange AIM listing, and was Director of Embedded Software at ARM plc. John founded and sold Micrologic Solutions to ARM plc and has negotiated IP licensing, outsourced manufacturing, distributor and JV agreements globally. John has a Masters’ degree in Engineering Science from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Andrew is a computer systems engineer and entrepreneur. He is the former director of the Microsoft Research laboratory in Cambridge.

Patrick is a clinician scientist and in 2012 was appointed Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Director of Cambridge University Health Partners, the Academic Health Sciences Centre for Cambridge. Patrick has been centrally involved in a series of discoveries that have revealed how changes in oxygenation are sensed, and how genetic alterations cause kidney disease. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award and is an NIHR Senior Investigator Emeritus. He has a research group in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Patrick is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Dr Diarmuid O’Brien is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Cambridge and Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise. In these roles he has responsibility for all elements of innovation, enterprise partnership, research commercialisation, investment, local and national government engagement on innovation and innovation and place.

During his time at Cambridge, Diarmuid has led the creation of a number of initiatives to unlock innovation and offer enhanced support for translational funding and company creation, including Founders at the University of Cambridge and the Technology Investment Fund. He co-founded and continues to be an active leader in Innovate Cambridge, a highly collaborative initiative defining and delivering an inclusive innovation future for the Cambridge ecosystem.

Previously Diarmuid was Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer of Trinity College Dublin and has held senior management roles in several university-founded startup companies, including NTera, Xoliox, and Deerac Fluidics. Diarmuid was a Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Sheffield and a degree in Materials Science from Trinity College Dublin

Heather has a broad range of experience encompassing fundraising, marketing, product strategy and business management. As CEO of Transversal, a Cambridge-based tech company, she was instrumental in its journey from start-up to acquisition by Verint Systems in 2019. She is currently VP of Product Strategy and GTM at Verint, responsible for driving the global strategy for their Knowledge Management portfolio. Heather has an MPhil from Cambridge University in European Literature.

Paul first joined Cambridge Enterprise in 2001 and returned after he completed his time with Health Enterprise East in 2009. Paul has considerable experience of technology transfer in both the biotech and medtech sectors.

Steve is Emeritus Professor in Information Engineering and former Senior ProVice Chancellor. He is expert in spoken language systems, conversational AI and machine learning. He has been involved in a number of successful Cambridge spinouts including Entropic, Phonetic Arts and VocalIQ.